When cancer is found in an organ, various treatment plans are developed in accordance with the stage of the cancer.
Examples of typical surgical approaches to liver cancer include partial liver resection. The examples also include living liver transplantation which transfers a healthy liver to a patient who would become dysfunctional as a result of liver cancer. These procedures both involve controlling the liver volume. If the liver rapidly loses equal to or more than 40% of its volume, the risk of liver failure increases significantly. Therefore, it is essential to plan in advance the extent of surgery and predict the post-treatment conditions of the patient. A technique that uses 3D computed tomography (3D-CT) to estimate the liver volume from the number of pixels in segments of the liver has emerged and become widely used, and currently its effectiveness is known.
PTL 1 (described below) discloses a mechanism that provides an image suitable for observation of the course of blood vessels in the vicinity of a cut surface.